Exactly what could be worse? Do profs shoot students who answer questions wrong? It seems like poisoning your students would be about the worst policy a university could have.

But then again, you never know what students actually learn in universities. In the July 20th TIME magazine, (Why Are Scotland’s Sheep Shrinking?), I read that “It’s not simply rising temperatures … but also changing seasonal patterns. … Animals are responding to changing season length. …They’re using the most reliable mental cue they have: light.”

So, global warming made the days longer. … It couldn’t be that longer days has made global warming?

Moving from stories that made no sense to books that made remarkable sense…

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Jack Weatherford) is an accidental history of Genghis Khan written by an archaeologist. Weatherford never intended to write this masterpiece, but when he was stonewalled by the Soviet Union while researching an academic article, one article turned into a 15-year epic effort.

Not only do we learn that Genghis Khan created the first postal system and got better economic advice than either Presidents Bush or Obama, we also learned that the same families were fighting in the same places over the same issues in 1200 A.D.

In The Virtues of War (Steven Pressfield), the author creates a historical-novel by stringing the diaries of Alexander the Great into a compelling narrative. If only the same Presidents (Bush and Obama) had read this first. They never would have ventured into Afghanistan, but if they would have they would have known that their armies would have to lose their souls to win the war.

Alexander decided that his army had to kill them all, burn all their villages and get out as soon as possible, or their souls would be lost forever.

Frederick Forsyth writes novels very similar in style to Tom Clancy. They are both impeccably researched and action-packed. In The Afghan, Forsyth tells the story of how one warrior goes from newlywed to terrorist and how Britian and the U.S. work to stop him.

The common thread between all three books is that over nine centuries, the places, the families and the battles remain the same. Together, they are a study in British, Russian and American hubris.